the institute politics, including making it possible for us to hire such extraordinary people like steve edwards and been restored and all of the other people -- and ben reeseberg and all the other people. [applause] you have been wondering what i have been doing and i have been wondering what you have been doing. [laughter] >> those who were disappointed by this outcome, the democrats elated by this outcome -- given the conventional wisdom around this campaign, the president's approval ratings that were barely above 50%, often dipping below it, the unemployment around 8%, gdp growth stock of around 2% -- the conventional wisdom was that should -- that this president should not be reelected. as you take a look at what happened two weeks ago, how do you assess this? >> let me just say first that i made a very good living and politics betting against conventional wisdom. it is a general principle of mine that the conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and it was wrong here. it was wrong here because what we often do in political circles and journalism is that we look at what happened i